


The Need to Talk

by CALira



Series: Out There [2]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV), Walking Dead (Alexandria)
Genre: Cute, M/M, Mushy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 08:06:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4427762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CALira/pseuds/CALira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron telling Eric to stay home from now on.<br/>How in the hell did he get him to agree to that?<br/>Follows "Bribery"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Need to Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Series - Out There - Chapter 2  
> Previous Chapter 1 - "Bribery"  
> Subsequent Chapter 3 - "Opinion"
> 
> Lots of hand holding and the like in lieu of pacing during an argument.

Eric lay convalescing in bed propped up against the headboard trying to finish an apple. It was a surprise breakfast treat from his dear selfless boyfriend, Aaron, who viscerally hated the things. 

Every time Eric lifted the apple to his mouth his eyes fell on his partner's curiously intent choir boy face with its ethereal steel blue eyes and just couldn't take the next bite.

“I can't eat this with you looking at me.”

Aaron sat half on the bed facing the injured Eric. He grinned and absently stroked Eric's thin but sinewy thigh. His hand slid over the worn surface of the rumpled work pants that Eric passed out in after his broken ankle was set at the town infirmary.

“Seriously. Cut it out.” Eric laughed. 

Aaron only continued to stare into his patient's warm coffee brown eyes in both adoration and wariness. He closely monitored Eric's pupils for signs of looping out on the latest dose of painkiller. The slender red head's body was a lot denser than it looked and he was a handful to wrestle off a pharmaceutical ledge even for the muscular brunette.

“OK, have it your way,” Eric placed one of his elegant hands over his eyes and finally took another bite out of the shiny red fruit. He chewed leisurely in the guilt free darkness behind his hand. 

Aaron chuckled and pried his tanned and roughened fingertips under the pale hand, uncovering Eric's eyes. He gave the hand a quick peck before lowering their collection of digits onto the gapless join between Eric's thigh and his own lap. 

He nodded reassuringly, “It's OK. Eat.” 

“You're sure?” 

“Yeah.” 

Eric looked at him sideways through slitted eyes. He made an extravagantly dramatic performance out of averting his gaze toward the windows and took another bite of the fruit.

Aaron smiled broadly in sparkling amusement. He savored the living tableau of domestic bliss as long as his conscience would let him.

Straightening his back, Aaron took a deep bolstering breath, "We need to talk."

"Oh, I see. You feed me, dope me up, charm the living daylights out of me and _nooow_ it's time for a little chat?" Eric flashed a sweetly teasing smile that made his pale face glow. 

"So, what's up?" he chirped with a mostly concealed hint of sadness and disappointment. He already knew.

The amiable redhead took a shallow breath as his lips involuntarily pulled flat, blocked from sight by the remains of the shark-weeked apple. Instinct and experience steeled the muscles of his body in anticipation of the impending blow.

Aaron lowered his face and, staring at their clasped hands, stroked his thumb across Eric's prominent knuckles. Visibly reluctant, the determined brunette set his jaw and exhaled forcibly,

"I don't think you should go out there recruiting with me anymore." His face was locked into a carefully crafted non-threatening expression: Aaron in full emissary mode. 

Eric's hand contracted in Aaron's loose grip. Although he had seen it coming, the vote of no confidence still stung. He slipped his hand out of Aaron's grasp and silently wrapped the apple carcass in a rumpled cloth napkin. 

His eyes riveted to Eric's face, Aaron reached slowly for the package of refuse and carefully placed it on the small tray sitting on the nightstand. He stared at his boyfriend in concern. Eric didn't get fire and brimstone angry, he got hurt instead. The resultant look of betrayal and sadness always devastated Aaron. 

He wasn't proud of it, but this time he had prepared himself to push past that look and willingly absorb the inevitable guilt of hurting his beau with this decision. But he had no idea what to do with whatever this was in front of him. 

Aaron stared into the wide pair of smoking brown eyes set like slow burning charcoal in Eric's unnaturally neutral face. He sat in stillness, unsure of how to continue conversing with this silently fuming version of his boyfriend.

Without a word, Eric reached for a bottle of water on the nightstand. Aaron got to it first and unsealed the cap. Never once breaking eye contact, he gently placed the plastic bottle directly in Eric's hand.

Eric silently tracked Aaron visually through all the activity of performing that small kindness. His eyes, like military grade surveillance tech, stayed locked onto his partner's attentive face. He took a big hit off the water bottle, draining it in one go like a frat boy with a beer bong. He licked the lingering droplets from his lips.

“While I'm on medical leave,” he calmly extended Aaron's statement into something tolerable. Leaving the unspoken challenge hanging over them, he allowed Aaron to carefully retrieve the empty water bottle from his rigid hands.

Aaron couldn't handle seeing his beloved boyfriend in such hostile pain and hid his eyes behind the act of stowing away the bottle. His strained voice was gentle but firm, “No. Not anymore.”

Eric blinked rhythmically at Aaron in silence. Nodding absently, he breathed a neutral, "Oh.” 

His speech played out in carefully spaced and deliberately pronounced words,

“So what you mean is that you don't _want_ me to be out there with you anymore." It wasn't a question. 

With no change is his expression or demeanor, Eric tightly clenched his hands together in his lap, protruding knuckles a whiter shade of pale through the shining strained skin. It was a small physical discomfort designed to focus his mind and distract himself from the shock. He had expected the “no go” but the “forever” was a punch to the kidneys.

Aaron knew him well enough to recognize that reaction. He wrapped his fingers around the tight ball of straining tendons and pressurized capillaries of Eric's hands, 

“You know that I've never trusted anyone else enough to let them back me up in the field. Only you. But it's getting to be too dangerous out there.”

Eric's slightly relaxed his sore hands. His lips flattened as something occurred to him that immediately bottomed out his blood temperature.

“Dangerous, huh?” He nodded thoughtfully and looked down at their almost entwined hands. 

“Will _you_ still be going out?," Eric queried in a disturbingly calm tone.

“Well...uhm...yeah, I was thinki...

"No." 

“What was that?” Aaron's head ticked to the side as he aligned his ear with the flow of their conversation.

“Not going to happen.” Eric said with an unnerving stillness born of percolating anger turned statement of fact. He continued,

“I'll chain you to the radiator before I let you go out there alone” 

"We have a fireplace,” Aaron corrected playfully.

Eric's nostrils flared like an albino bull rushing an overstock sale on red capes. "Hand me one of my crutches will you? I need to smack you with it." 

“Ok. Ok. Couldn't help myself.” Aaron grinned broadly at Eric who for the first time in years was not smiling back. 

Aaron’s smile faded as a chill crept along his lower back. His hands still draped over Eric's unwelcoming interlaced fingers, he thought to himself, 

_'Sooo...humor was completely the wrong choice.'_

In Aaron's defense, Eric was usually distracted easily by humor and sarcasm. His sweet gentle suitor was committed to living a life of smiles, laughs and double entrendes. Aaron relied on those traits as the base of his “go to” tactic to calm a marauding Eric the Pale. He didn't expect his lightly teasing attempt to diffuse the situation to fail so miserably.

Aaron swallowed nervously and coughed, “I think there's a mutually acceptable middle ground.” 

Lengthening his neck he swallowed again. “Something occurred to me while I watched you breathe in your sleep. Do you remember who Daryl is from the new group?” 

“Hmm. Scruffy, Sweaty, Muscley. Ice blue eyes. Carries a cross bow?”

“Oh, so you _did_ notice him.”

“Never claimed to be blind, Sweets.” 

A small thrill of hope sparked in Aaron’s chest and he ventured a cautious smile. Not only had Eric moderately tolerated his pretense of jealousy, he played back ... kind of. At the very least, one of the milder forms of his partner's joking sarcasm made a brief appearance and that was a good enough start.

"You remember how good he was with his people? How well he worked the world in general? I think that he'd make a good recruiter.”

“I remember. Yes, we saw as much” The light in Eric's eyes grew vague as he recalled all that they had witnessed about this group out in the wild.

“He'll keep you safe. Do a better job than I ever could anyway.” He lowered his face in disappointment.

Nodding, he shrugged a shoulder. “I suppose, if you _have_ to replace me while I heal...”

“Eric, my sweet shiny penny, I'm not attracted to Daryl. You don't have to worry about that. I mean look at you. He's _clearly_ not my type.” His lovely blue-gray eyes shone brightly in oblivious blockheadedness.

Eric's head lifted and his face went slack. His eyes blinked rapidly turning his view of Aaron into an old Charlie Chaplain flick complete with bittersweet pathos.

“Let's just assume that there was something vaguely resembling an intentional compliment in there somewhere.” He shook his head in amazed incredulity. 

Eric knew he had the right to be livid at the clumsy left-handed insult of a compliment imbedded in that hurtful remark, but he was too taken with Aaron's loss of control over his steady embassy manners to act on that right. In fact, the sight of Aaron actively chewing his foot was starting to amuse him. There was something endearing about a flummoxed Aaron. 

Aaron bit his congenitally pouty lower lip. Completely rattled by an unpredictably mercurial Eric he gasped, “Oh. Crap. I may have put that the wrong way.” 

Eric sighed and managed a gently amused smile. He cradled Aaron's dry roughened hands in his own.

“Aaron, Babe. Honey. Sweetheart. I love you with all that I am and all that I could ever even hope to be.” 

He kissed each of the strong hands in turn. Peering deeply into mist blue eyes, he continued,

“...but you seriously need to get over yourself, Doll Face.”

Aaron’s features elongated as his forehead tried to reach up over his fleecy brown hair for the nape of his neck.

“Not everything with a dick wants to wander around inside your pants,” Eric commented professorially.

“Just me. And there's not enough room in there for anybody else, Big Fella.” He indulged in a happy and slutty little eyebrow dance capped off with a wink.

That made Aaron smile which in turn made Eric insanely happy. But, as they seemed to be ruining good moods tonight, he added,

“Besides, if I were ever to catch even a hint of something inappropriate going on...

He gently pulsed Aaron’s fingers. 

“...I'll go after your boys with one of the kitchen knives while you sleep.”

Aaron arched an eyebrow, uncertain how much of that was a joke.

Eric lightly kissed Aaron’s very confused lips. He gave his curly headed love a reprieve.

“I trust you. OK?” 

Still embarrassed and queasy from the taste of his own damn foot, Aaron responded, 

“OK. So you aren't jealous.” 

Eric shook his head in amusement as Aaron looked at him quizzically. 

“Then what's wrong with having Daryl out there with me?”

“Nothing. I'm glad you considered him. Like I said, I know you'll be safer out there for partnering with him.”

“Eric, Baby. I know you. There's something else.”

“Despite your delusional fantasy, it's certainly not that I'm jealous of him sexually or romantically.” 

“Ah. But, you are jealous in some way?”

 _'Damn! Thought I got that one past him,'_ Eric mentally admonished himself. He frowned and looked away.

“It's childish and embarrassing and not fair to you.”

“You may as well say it now or I’ll just hover over you without pity until you crack and tell me anyway.”

Eric let out a determined huff of air, 

“I'm...upset...that you and Daryl will be bonding together in a “manly men of the woods” way that I can't even begin to hope to achieve.” 

“And. Well... I want to be the only one bonded with you!” he pouted unreasonably, too hurt, sad and worried to even try to take the high road.

“Cinnamon, Baby. I couldn't be more firmly bonded with you if we used super glue.”

Eric didn't laugh at hearing their in-joke stripper name. He didn't start a fresh round of sarcasm-badminton either. He didn't even seem angry. To the contrary, Eric seemed inconsolable. 

Aaron was in a panic. He could talk guerrillas, tyrants and despots into letting him help the people they terrorized, but he couldn't accomplish the fundamental task of speaking with his beloved boyfriend without upsetting him.

Eric mumbled, “Said it was stupid.” Mortified, his lips decayed into a devastated frown.

Aaron gently lifted Eric's face by the chin. With gentle compassion, he said softly, “No, Baby. It's not stupid. It's how you feel and that's just biology.” 

Aaron’s shoulders slumped as he laid his hand on Eric's chest. 

“At most, Daryl could become like a brother. We do have a lot in common. But he could never be as important to me as you are.”

“I _know_. Logically, I get it,” Eric responded wearily. Stroking the strong hand on his chest with one of his own deeply sinewed ones he continued,

“But jeez, Babe, give me a minute. You kind of sprung the extent of this on me.” 

He wrapped his fingers around Aaron’s hand and lightly tapped it against his chest. “I _will_ get used to the idea of sharing you. I'm just working through a little insecurity right now.”

He shook his head and lowered his face in regret, “I shouldn't have mentioned it.”

“You know you can tell me anything.” Aaron ducked his head and looked up into his boyfriend's drawn face.

“I know, Sweets.” Eric smiled listlessly through wispy traces of lingering sadness. 

“What I don't know is how many ways I need to say it to you, Babe; I'm good with you and Daryl. Really. I'm even okay with the idea of being replaced...until I heal.”

“Then why do you still look so hurt?”

Eric sat unnaturally still and stared at the outdoorsman silently for a few too many heartbeats beyond comfortable. He pursed his lips and asked quietly,

“What do you think of me that makes you so eager to replace me with a stranger?”

Aaron groaned painfully, “Eric, Baby, I've put you through a lot tonight already. Do you really want us to open up another artery?”

“No... but we are.”


End file.
